Tomberg and Anthroposophy

[AshvinP]

The Church is in fact not operating strictly by its old playbook. The Church of 2025 is incredibly different from the Church of, say, 1925. Though highly conservative, the Church is also progressive in key ways. And these key developments are precisely what constitutes the spirit-openness I've been referring to. To be clear, these developments are subtle and don't come in the form of clear-cut teachings. Instead they appear as what I've referred to as "holes in the canopy of the Intellectual Soul." These are little openings or doorways into the domain of personal certainty, upon which the Intellectual soul cannot and must not impinge. To express these as explicit teachings would cut against the very grain of personal certainty. The more subtle, intimate activity of unknown friends is what will drive the development forward. To my mind, this is the solution to the inherent problem of Anthroposophy, which we've already discussed at length for which you've provided another great reference from Steiner. And to provide a few concrete examples of the openings, here are a few: crucial developments around conscience and the definition of the human person (in which references to the 'I' are not uncommon), the entire impulse behind Vatican II, recent expansions in the understanding of soteriology (which essentially boils down to an expansion of the very concept of the Church to include spheres outside its direct membership), very recent ecumenical movements and clarifications around the notion that Christ has worked in and through other religions. There are quite a few more such examples. Most of these are things that huge numbers of people within the Church are up in arms about. They are fueling an ultra-conservative backlash which at the moment has taken the form of the "Trad" movement. The Vatican has pressed onward nonetheless, absolutely refusing to capitulate to these regressive tendencies but upholding dogma in the face of those who seek to move the Church closer to leftist political agendas.

I think we do well to remember also that, while it's true in general that phenomena which overstay their welcome on the stage of history become retrogressive forces if untransformed, sometimes these same phenomena are kept in place or held back for a particular reason: namely to be put into service of a fructification of streams. In these cases, certain aspects of development are held back while others germinate. This is precisely what happened, for instance, in the Hebrew people, in whom the sense of personal-internal morality was held back in order to be kept fresh for the fructification of the Buddhist current, while at the same time a mighty I-impulse came to expression in the stream of heredity. And we expect a similar process to take place again within what is now the Eastern Orthodox (specifically the Russian stream) Church. This stream is being held back at a pre-Intellectual Soul level in order to remain fertile for the Maitreya impulse in the sixth epoch.

It's interesting because I was recently contemplating this relationship between the implicit/subtle and explicit in the context of the Gospels, which I may write more about soon. For example, in the ancient Hebrew language, much of the intuitive meaning of speech was implicit in the inner gestures of the soul when sounding out letters/words, while only the vowels were manifestly written. By the time we come to Christ, however, much more of that intuitive meaning has been flattened onto the manifest screen of the intellectual soul. The inner gestures are now not so much felt through the sounding of the speech, but reflected in the explicit content of that speech and can be lucidly (yet more shallowly) surveyed by the intellect. The implicit-explicit reaches a very harmonious balance at this stage, which is generally what we think of as highly artistic speech or writing, expressed through parables, metaphors, and living images. Many of Christ's sayings can be seen as direct symbolic descriptions of our imaginative life and its dynamics. As one of many examples,

"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." (Matt. 6:22)

We can sense the meaning of this saying quite clearly when we attempt to concentrate our spiritual activity into a unitary theme, and through such a concentrated state, allow the light of intuitive meaning to radiate through our inner space. What Christ provided and emulated for us is indeed a subtle process, not achieved through any kind of blunt intellectual force or abstract recitation of spiritual concepts. It is something that invites us to participate with imaginative effort, to concentrate within the flow of our experience such that the deeper meaning of such sayings becomes transparent. Yet that subtleness is not really at the level of the explicit content of his speech, which has now become a quite direct reflection of inner dynamics. We could say he is poking holes in the canopy of the intellectual soul, yet this is not done in secret or veiled in any symbols which are highly obscure for the intellect. Neither is it done through any sort of discursive theological argumentation. Christ even explicitly tells his disciples that the parables should only feel veiled for the 'multitudes' of that time, but not for them. Isn't this something that he knew future intellectual humanity would read and contemplate?

Of course, Steiner and Tomberg both emulated the same Impulse that spirals the explicit and implicit together in our imaginative movements. Tomberg leaned more into leveraging ancient and somewhat arcane symbols like the Tarot, but he always accompanied that with crystal clear-cut reasoning of their inner significance, i.e., the phenomenologically verifiable dynamics which they reflect in our lives. This is why I also referenced Cleric's quote on the #1 vs. #2 bridges to the spiritual soul, where he expressed that we no longer need to speak with indirect parables of wetness for souls that are already swimming in the imaginative waters. In that #1 case, "subtleness" becomes more like vagueness and abstraction, or at best the kind of discursive argumentation we got from monist-idealist philosophers a few centuries ago. The concepts all line up in the right order and reflect deeper spiritual realities, but they don't simultaneously transform the thinking of the "I" that is weaving through those symbolic concepts.

Also, if we think about it, the impingement on the domain of personal certainty comes exactly when the 'enzymes' toward inner transformation become too subtle, i.e. too indirect and veiled, to be surveyed freely and lucidly by intellectual consciousness. Abstract theological argumentation then becomes similar to ancient obscure symbols in that sense. Personal certainty only arrives when the "I" feels like it has freely weaved its way into the vicinity of the relevant insights through its recursive mental pictures, rather than feeling like something has been imposed on it in a shadowy way or from without. It seems to me like Tomberg's project was to find a harmonious balancing point between the explicit and implicit, which indeed may have been a resurrected form of Steiner's impulse, but I don't see this intuitive approach being emulated within the Church any more than it is in the scientific or artistic domains, which is to say, mostly unconsciously.

What you say about the holding back of certain qualities to fructify streams at a later time is a fair point. and I will have to contemplate that further. I can see how it is relevant to this discussion of how the Church can function in our time for the progressive development of intellectual souls.

[AshvinP]

I would like to share this quote from Steiner, which speaks to the moral dilemma that Tomberg also highlights in the dissemination of esoteric facts, particularly the facts surrounding reincarnation. This entire lecture cycle about perceiving Christ in the etheric is quite relevant to the recent discussions, since discovering the incarnation of Christ in the etheric is synonymous with how we find the bridge from the intellectual soul to the spiritual soul in our time.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/ReapChri ... 27p01.html

A question intrudes even upon the mind of one familiar with the elements of an anthroposophical world conception: is there any sense or purpose in the fact that the human soul appears again and again in successive incarnations or embodiments on earth? One may accept the abstract truth of reincarnation, yet such an abstract truth basically can help us little in life. Truths acquire a significance in our lives only when they can be transformed, recast, in our souls into warmth of feeling, into the light that shines forth within us in such a way that it leads us onward along the path of life. For this reason, the abstract truth of reincarnation acquires significance for us only when we are able to know something more precise and intimate concerning the sense and significance of the successive incarnations of human beings. This will be one of the questions with which we shall occupy ourselves today....If you call all this before your soul, you must say to yourselves that there is the possibility for souls to experience something new from each existence on earth, always to receive new fruits, and then to unite these fruits with their own lives in order to pass through a spiritual life between death and a new birth. When the conditions have changed so that something new can be learned and it is worthwhile to descend again to earth, these souls actually come again in a new incarnation.

It is not merely a play of forces and beings active behind phenomena that brings man down again and again into new incarnations; it is a case, rather, of every incarnation contributing a new force and faculty as a new member within the divine plan representing the totality of human life. Only when we survey life in this way does the law of repeated lives on earth acquire true meaning. At the same time, we must also ask ourselves if it is not possible to miss some opportunity. Is it not possible that there is something that depends upon whether or not we make the most of any one incarnation or embodiment in the right way? If we could simply be sure that we would have a repetition of our present life in the next incarnation, many people could argue, “I have plenty of time because I shall live many more times.”

If one considers the most important facts of life, however, and knows that what the earth can give us during a definite period of time cannot be experienced again during another period, one will realize that it is indeed possible to miss opportunities; one can then acquire an inner sense of obligation and responsibility to make use of each incarnation, each earthly embodiment, in the right way. 

When the facts of reincarnation float at the surface of intellectual consciousness (as it must do to begin with), a moral dilemma arises within the soul. This soul is already flowing with default habits of finding intellectual beliefs, outlooks, etc. that rationalize the abdication of responsibility. In this situation, there is a risk of souls using such floating facts to reinforce the unhealthy habit and simply bide their time until their next incarnation. Occult scientists were well aware of this dilemma connected with making esoteric knowledge exoteric in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nietzsche referred to this dilemma as the "slave morality" of Christian believers. The soul generally abdicates responsibility for adapting to and navigating worldly circumstances and, instead, rides along passively on the promise of a nebulous afterlife when all things will be set aright. Abstract knowledge of reincarnation can serve this same function and reinforce slave morality, as Steiner indicates above.

There seem to be two complementary approaches to this core dilemma, which Tomberg and Steiner respectively emphasize. One is to become more cautious and place knowledge of reincarnation into the domain of 'personal certainty', in the sense that it should not be too explicitly conveyed to others, but each soul can quietly discover it for themselves. We soberly assess the default state of souls in our time and think carefully about direct communication of occult knowledge that may further entrench the soul within its etched channels of hesitance, passivity, indolence, etc. By contemplating such possibilities, we are in fact becoming more sensitive to the etched channels of our soul life and how the facts of spiritual science interact with them, how we orient toward them abstractly or more intimately, how that orientation modulates our thoughts and feelings, etc. The other approach is to leverage such facts in a meditative way, penetrating through them to deeper scales of living experience, where consciousness of the wider context in which the facts of reincarnation and karma appear will naturally mitigate against the risk. Such a living experience of the wider context inspires the soul to not only avoid slave morality, but to take the current incarnation even more seriously.

I don't think either perspective or approach should be institutionalized by the Catholic Church or the Anthroposophical Society. When that happens, they are merely reduced to a dialectical opposition rather than complementary intuitive approaches that are highly dependent on particular evolutionary and individual circumstances. Both approaches are reflected in Steiner's quote above and in spiritual science more generally. Indeed, the post-Steiner society generally became too one-sided, focusing more on building up intellectual schemes than on the cultivation of the whole human being, more on disseminating esoteric facts than on carefully assessing the risks, and so on. Tomberg rightly called attention to this trend and emphasized a complementary 'devotional phenomenology' to balance it out. Yet that is also already present in Steiner as well, and at no time did either of them suggest we need a parallel track to the intuitive path of thinking, but rather, this path should harmonize all dichotomous approaches to higher knowledge within itself (just as we strive for a harmonious dance of activity and receptivity in the meditative state). 
 

[Federica]

I would like to share this quote from Steiner, which speaks to the moral dilemma that Tomberg also highlights in the dissemination of esoteric facts, particularly the facts surrounding reincarnation. This entire lecture cycle about perceiving Christ in the etheric is quite relevant to the recent discussions, since discovering the incarnation of Christ in the etheric is synonymous with how we find the bridge from the intellectual soul to the spiritual soul in our time.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/ReapChri ... 27p01.html

A question intrudes even upon the mind of one familiar with the elements of an anthroposophical world conception: is there any sense or purpose in the fact that the human soul appears again and again in successive incarnations or embodiments on earth? One may accept the abstract truth of reincarnation, yet such an abstract truth basically can help us little in life. Truths acquire a significance in our lives only when they can be transformed, recast, in our souls into warmth of feeling, into the light that shines forth within us in such a way that it leads us onward along the path of life. For this reason, the abstract truth of reincarnation acquires significance for us only when we are able to know something more precise and intimate concerning the sense and significance of the successive incarnations of human beings. This will be one of the questions with which we shall occupy ourselves today....If you call all this before your soul, you must say to yourselves that there is the possibility for souls to experience something new from each existence on earth, always to receive new fruits, and then to unite these fruits with their own lives in order to pass through a spiritual life between death and a new birth. When the conditions have changed so that something new can be learned and it is worthwhile to descend again to earth, these souls actually come again in a new incarnation.

It is not merely a play of forces and beings active behind phenomena that brings man down again and again into new incarnations; it is a case, rather, of every incarnation contributing a new force and faculty as a new member within the divine plan representing the totality of human life. Only when we survey life in this way does the law of repeated lives on earth acquire true meaning. At the same time, we must also ask ourselves if it is not possible to miss some opportunity. Is it not possible that there is something that depends upon whether or not we make the most of any one incarnation or embodiment in the right way? If we could simply be sure that we would have a repetition of our present life in the next incarnation, many people could argue, “I have plenty of time because I shall live many more times.”

If one considers the most important facts of life, however, and knows that what the earth can give us during a definite period of time cannot be experienced again during another period, one will realize that it is indeed possible to miss opportunities; one can then acquire an inner sense of obligation and responsibility to make use of each incarnation, each earthly embodiment, in the right way. 

When the facts of reincarnation float at the surface of intellectual consciousness (as it must do to begin with), a moral dilemma arises within the soul. This soul is already flowing with default habits of finding intellectual beliefs, outlooks, etc. that rationalize the abdication of responsibility. In this situation, there is a risk of souls using such floating facts to reinforce the unhealthy habit and simply bide their time until their next incarnation. Occult scientists were well aware of this dilemma connected with making esoteric knowledge exoteric in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nietzsche referred to this dilemma as the "slave morality" of Christian believers. The soul generally abdicates responsibility for adapting to and navigating worldly circumstances and, instead, rides along passively on the promise of a nebulous afterlife when all things will be set aright. Abstract knowledge of reincarnation can serve this same function and reinforce slave morality, as Steiner indicates above.

There seem to be two complementary approaches to this core dilemma, which Tomberg and Steiner respectively emphasize. One is to become more cautious and place knowledge of reincarnation into the domain of 'personal certainty', in the sense that it should not be too explicitly conveyed to others, but each soul can quietly discover it for themselves. We soberly assess the default state of souls in our time and think carefully about direct communication of occult knowledge that may further entrench the soul within its etched channels of hesitance, passivity, indolence, etc. By contemplating such possibilities, we are in fact becoming more sensitive to the etched channels of our soul life and how the facts of spiritual science interact with them, how we orient toward them abstractly or more intimately, how that orientation modulates our thoughts and feelings, etc. The other approach is to leverage such facts in a meditative way, penetrating through them to deeper scales of living experience, where consciousness of the wider context in which the facts of reincarnation and karma appear will naturally mitigate against the risk. Such a living experience of the wider context inspires the soul to not only avoid slave morality, but to take the current incarnation even more seriously.

I don't think either perspective or approach should be institutionalized by the Catholic Church or the Anthroposophical Society. When that happens, they are merely reduced to a dialectical opposition rather than complementary intuitive approaches that are highly dependent on particular evolutionary and individual circumstances. Both approaches are reflected in Steiner's quote above and in spiritual science more generally. Indeed, the post-Steiner society generally became too one-sided, focusing more on building up intellectual schemes than on the cultivation of the whole human being, more on disseminating esoteric facts than on carefully assessing the risks, and so on. Tomberg rightly called attention to this trend and emphasized a complementary 'devotional phenomenology' to balance it out. Yet that is also already present in Steiner as well, and at no time did either of them suggest we need a parallel track to the intuitive path of thinking, but rather, this path should harmonize all dichotomous approaches to higher knowledge within itself (just as we strive for a harmonious dance of activity and receptivity in the meditative state). 
 

It is true that, from the perspective of some people - even a majority of people - who are unable to consider the facts of life with unprejudiced thinking, a temptation may present itself to conscience once the reality of reincarnation becomes known. The temptation consists of discarding responsibility for the work of becoming truly human, under the pretext of future chances to do so. As Steiner said, once even only the most important facts of life are acknowledged, the only morally right approach to such temptation, or dilemma, becomes readily identified. It should equally be noted - as Steiner relentlessly emphasized - that a perfectly specular temptation, or dilemma, arises when knowledge of the reality of reincarnation is concealed from the public. This is the temptation of a desire for easy immortality, which knowledge of having previously lived on earth can appropriately cure.

Just as knowledge of one’s future incarnations can foster the temptation of delaying human responsibility, ignorance of one’s past reincarnations can foster the temptation of a vain wish for the afterlife (as you pointed out before, this is directly connected to the necessity of knowing about reincarnation in order to properly understand suffering). With all this in mind, we must therefore conclude that, in principle, there is just as much validity in concealing as there is in spreading knowledge of reincarnation, to the extent that attention is exclusively brought to the possible effects of such knowledge on the moral conduct of the average man. Steiner, of course, never limited his position to those factors, in approaching the question of spreading knowledge of the higher worlds, and of reincarnation in particular.

In our time, it goes against the plans of the Spirit to withdraw or conceal knowledge of the higher worlds from humanity at large. To give this turning point in the plan powerful inception is the meaning itself of Rudolf Steiner’s life. Thus, not only Steiner's acknowledgment (in the quote) that some people may be tempted to delay responsibility is balanced out by the possibility that the same people be equally tempted by ignorance of reincarnation (as explained) but also - and more importantly - Steiner’s complementary approach was to both encourage to leverage the fact of reincarnation in meditation, and to tirelessly advocate and operate for the spreading of knowledge of the higher worlds in the society at large. Inevitably, this approach can’t be complementary with the choice of not too explicitly conveying reincarnation to others.

In this sense, it’s only up to us to “soberly assess the default state of souls in our time and think carefully about direct communication of occult knowledge that may further entrench the soul within its etched channels of hesitance, passivity, indolence” in the cases of every given situation we find ourselves in, in daily life. Surely, it is not appropriate to speak about reincarnation at every occasion we find ourselves in communication with others and potentially able to do it. Nonetheless, the assessment of the default state of souls in our times has been already made by the Spirit of our time, and it is indisputable that, for an anthroposopher, knowledge of the higher worlds needs to be spread today. For an anthroposopher therefore (I don’t mean here a member of the Anthroposophical society, but a person who has decided to take in Anthroposophy in their inmost being) the choice of withholding such knowledge, or avoiding the topic altogether, may be justified by the individual and particular circumstances, but should not rely on the idea that such concealment is complementary with Steiner’s approach to the question, or, even less, recommended or contemplated by Steiner.

To conclude, we must clearly distinguish between the possibility of temptation for the average man, or dilemma, acknowledged in the quote above, and the choice of following or not following the Zeitgeist of bringing the knowledge of the higher worlds to the public in our time. As shown, acknowledgment of the former has no import on the choice of withholding ample spreading of such knowledge. For all these reasons, I disagree that Steiner’s quote “reflects both approaches”, the spreading and the withholding one. It seems to me that such an attempt to somehow reconcile the historical opening of the Mysteries and its diametral opposite goes against history, and against the purpose and meaning of Steiner’s very contribution to the evolution of humanity.

[Federica]

With regards to the above, I would like to clarify two things:

1. Besides the point that those temptations, or dilemmas, are not the decisive factor in deciding whether or not it is appropriate to spread knowledge of reincarnation, it's worth highlighting that a look at only one side of the dilemma - namely the risk of delaying responsibility - means holding a literally onesided view of the question, disregarding the other, equally present, half - keenly stressed by Steiner - namely the fact he called "unbornness", even lamenting that modern languages should include this word as the symmetrical counterpart of "immortality", to equalize the concept of "eternity", which comprehends both. This other half of the dilemma, as said above, is the temptation of selfishly wishing to become immortal, which arises as a consequence of withholding knowledge of reincarnation.

2. Please believe me, I am not posting this because it's you, Ashvin. This is not the expression of an "entangled" or antipathetic intention. I have completed today a careful re-reading of Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, and of Theosophy. Besides the fact that it's unequivocally claimed by Steiner, that explicit knowledge of reincarnation is a necessity in our time is my genuine understanding. It stands in clarity before me that, to become fully human, man needs to be presented with this truth, or fact of existence, which even mainstream science is progressively recognizing today (even if only indirectly for now, by merely taking a careful look at the facts of life).

[Cleric]

Here's one more angle that will hopefully help get a better perspective. Consider how Steiner spoke about
1. Wisdom of Man (Anthroposophy)
2. Wisdom of the Soul (Psychosophy)
3. Wisdom of the Spirit (Pneumatosophy)
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/WisdoMan ... index.html

We usually take Anthroposophy as a more encompassing term, including the whole of spiritual science, but in the above context, it must be seen more specifically.
1. The intuitive life experienced when the full spiritual life intersects with the embodied spectrum - body and intellect
2. The intuitive life experienced within the tensions of the streams of destiny/karma (acting as a carrier flow for the above) - soul
3. The intuitive life experienced within the archetypal creative currents of the Cosmos (carrier flow for all the above) - spirit

We can easily discern that VT, entering his catholic period, basically retracts into Soul Wisdom. He is dissatisfied with Spirit Wisdom, which feels too abstract. Whether this was his own limitation or he was too conscious of how far removed most people are from these depths (and thus decided to engage in a field that felt more proximate to most of the souls) is another question. It is certain, however, that the Wisdom of the Spirit became the amniotic sac of the Church. We should really feel this - the soul gladly delegates the depths of existence to the being of the Church.

What is the difference between 2 and 3? In 2 we still live as an ensouled being (Spirit Self or Soul Self), living in personal soul images reflecting (symbolizing) the Cosmic intuitive realities. In 3 we grow into the creative Being of the Cosmos and its rhythmic unfolding (Spirit Life, Spirit Man). This includes not only the grand scale evolutionary metamorphoses but also their fractal-like receding elemental images. The difficulty in taking Spirit Wisdom properly (and not as mere abstract ideas) is that we need to approach a perspective where our existence finds its reflection in the grand scale of Cosmic happenings. IOW, we must overcome the idea that we can pursue our personal thread of existence. Our stream of becoming is now inseparable from the holistic flow of Cosmic becoming.

For this reason, it is very easy to understand why Spirit Wisdom inevitably seems more abstract and remote at first, while Soul Wisdom speaks more intimately. This can make it seem like we can start absorbing Soul Wisdom, while Spirit Wisdom will come when the time is right. However, if we approach it in this way, that 'right' time may never come. Why is this so? Because it is often not realized that even in our mainstream development, we're already subconsciously with one foot into the spiritual world, into 3.

Let's take as an example Darwin. This is often seen as an example of the exact opposite of the proper evolutionary trajectory that humanity must take, but we must also realize that these ideas are directly indicative of the fact that the human spirit is ripe to absorb into its intuitive being the grand scale development of the World. Notice that by thinking about the evolution of the species, we necessarily live with our thoughts (even if only in abstract mental images) in the stream of existence that far surpasses our present personal life. So with our intellect we stretch, we reach into the mystery of existence, trying to find something about the Taylor curvatures of the here and now.

If today we are in a position to think seriously about the mainstream ideas of biological and Cosmic evolution (the Big Bang, the generations of stars and matter), then we absolutely are in a position to reach into true Spirit Wisdom. If we do not do that, if we, for example, imagine that these mainstream theories are mere intellectual toys, and we are far better off by delving into Soul Wisdom, while we leave the deeper questions for the future, we simply do not realize that with our spiritual being, we're already instinctively active in the regions beyond the amniotic sac. If we understand this, we see that not only is it not too early to introduce Spirit Wisdom, but it is actually vital. I remind of this quote:

Indeed, many of us will say: we strive for two things on our way through the spiritual-scientific movement. First: to penetrate that reasonably which spiritual science gives us. Secondly: because we apply to our souls the spiritual-scientific methods, as they are outlined to us, for example, in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, we strive for getting the perception of the spiritual world already during our physical incarnation. But some will say: definitely only to some, only to few it is allotted by their karma to reach the spiritual world consciously in this incarnation. Indeed, everybody would and does come into the spiritual world in certain sense who only applies these rules; but noticing that he is in it; taking notice on it is more difficult than entering it. Some people are prevented from being aware in which way they are in the spiritual world even if they are really in it. Because they are unable to apply that fine, intimate attention on their experience. One would like to say, everybody who applies the instructions given in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds enters the spiritual world with his self after a relatively short time, but — he does not notice it. Just concerning such a consideration I have to stress repeatedly that the reasonable understanding of that which is given in spiritual science does not depend at all whether anybody himself beholds in the spiritual world.
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA159 ... 19p01.html

This is tremendously important. Not only on a personal level but also on the collective. That not too many people today have thoughts of the spiritual realm is not yet the greatest danger. It would be even worse when more and more people live instinctively in the spiritual streams but do not recognize it; if everything would still be grasped only as far as it intersects with the bodily spectrum. We have spoken about how psychedelics offer one such danger, that the bodies loosen, yet the spiritual being remains completely numb to the finer intuitive life. Instead, one still seeks to 'see', one seeks reality in bodily-like sensations (which are always of the nature of receding memories).

We often forget how prepared we are to approach things thanks to spiritual science. Then we can appreciate the masterful ways in which Soul Wisdom is conveyed by VT. But we should also ask: How would things stand if this work was our main source of navigation and we knew nothing of Spirit Wisdom? Would we ever reach a point where we feel that we need to go further? Or we would rather wait for the Church aura itself to evolve and carry us? Then, in whose service it is if human beings do not notice that they are already unconsciously moving within the Spirit worlds (and instead await the Church to reach them and guide souls through updated rituals and sacraments)?

[AshvinP]

I will try to clarify a few things because I can see how my previous post may have been unclear. What I am interested in exploring are the inner dynamics at play, which are known to be certain and therefore are not up for debate. They are invariant of any particular interpretations we may ascribe to either Steiner or Tomberg. The latter are only convenient anchor points for this inner exploration. Such inner dynamics can certainly be refined, expanded, elaborated, fleshed out, etc., through further discussion, but they are not the kind of theoretical statements that lend themselves to endless debate. In this context, I was using Steiner and Tomberg as anchor points for certain soul moods, which we may loosely characterize as more conservative or more liberal approaches to the dissemination of occult knowledge. All such soul moods serve valid functions in the pursuit of higher knowledge as long as we orient to and harmonize them properly.

I can use an example to make this point clearer. Let's say that I observe that Earthly power is only wielded by a few individuals over others because souls are so attached to wealth, status, reputation, and generally physical life. It is a phenomenological observation that if we are not so attached to physical life, identifying our "I" with the bodily senses and the soul life which has been molded over those sensory experiences, but rather understand that this physical experience is one stage of our intuitive existence that will metamorphose into something new after death, then the totalitarians, psychopaths, and so on who threaten us with bodily harm and death will not be able to modulate our thoughts, feelings, and actions so deeply. We will become relatively independent of such power games. With this observation, am I postulating that it would be the best thing for humanity if all souls completely discard any attachment or value for physical life and only contemplate their potential pure intuitive existence? No, formulating such abstract and unrealistic rules is not my concern at all. I am only interested in highlighting the phenomenologically verifiable facts that are invariant of all such theoretical rules and programs.

We have discussed before some aspects of the more conservative soul mood and approach. For example, we have spoken of how we are often tempted to convey spiritual insights to others immediately upon receiving them, without properly considering the wider living context through which those insights were gained. We forget the dynamic process that we have lived through to attain that deeper orientation, and simply take it for granted that others will experience the same orientation through our words and images. We don't consider that these words and images, devoid of that wider living context, could even be counterproductive to the other soul's orientation. We can clearly sense such a soul mood and approach at work in the quote below, for example:

The conclusion which asserts itself from all that we have said above concerning the sphere of mirages is that practical esotericism demands at least the same prudence as exact science, but the prudence that it demands is of a nature that is not only intellectual but also, and above all, moral. In fact, it encompasses the whole human being with his faculties of reasoning, imagination and will. It is therefore a matter of being prudent. For this reason the rule of every serious esotericist should be to be silent—often for a length of years—concerning every new illumination or inspiration that he has, so as to give it the necessary time to mature, i.e. to acquire that certainty which results from its accordance with moral consciousness, moral logic, the totality of spiritual and ordinary personal experience—and that of friends and spiritual guides of the past and present—as also with divine revelation, whose eternal dogmas are guiding constellations in the intellectual and moral heaven. And it will be only after having arrived at such an accordance that a personal illumination or inspiration can be considered communicable and presentable.

The main point I am trying to convey is that we need to delve a level deeper than weighing the "concealment or spreading of esoteric knowledge" on our mental scale and judging which one prevails over the other. From my perspective, both Steiner and Tomberg's discussion of these intimate facts completely transcends such a mental weighing of contents. Instead, by imaginatively contemplating the possible approaches to disseminating occult knowledge, we become more sensitive to how such knowledge influences our soul life at a deeper scale. It is phenomenologically verifiable that we are all on the spectrum of abdicating responsibility for Earthly tasks that could be accomplished within our current incarnation, including the task of developing higher organs of perception. The peculiar thing in our time is that even intellectual understanding of spiritual realities can be utilized to reinforce this abdication, just as much as ignorance of those realities. As long as our intellectual scale of thinking is the most in focus for navigating reality, as it is for most souls, we are at risk of veering in this direction. The discussion of how to deal with knowledge of reincarnation is not about setting up universal rules for whether such knowledge should be spread or concealed, some kind of program for "how to be a proper occultist", but about becoming more acutely sensitive to this gradient of temptation that our intellect is continually encountering. 

I think it is undeniably the case that this is how we truthfully experience the facts of occult knowledge within the sphere of the intellect and how we gain a proper orientation to those facts, approaching them from many different angles. We can remember that Tomberg did not avoid discussing reincarnation publicly (and many other Cosmic-scale esoteric topics), but treated it from a different angle. He could have said nothing at all and withheld/concealed such a discussion, but instead he chose to give it an imaginative and principled treatment. As he makes clear from the outset of MoT, all content presented is to be considered and approached as a spiritual exercise. Only then do we realize its deeper value, instead of placing its content on a scale against other content that we feel more or less drawn to. And I still feel that Steiner, more than anyone else, recognized these varying soul moods and their practical functions in the process of higher development. More than anyone else, he articulated how they can be harmonized and brought into the proper balance. From his perspective, I highly doubt that anything Tomberg wrote, even in his Catholic period, would be experienced as any sort of dialectical opposition to what he was also doing. But again, regardless of whether that is the case or not, the inner dynamics remain the same and can be explored and verified by each soul, here and now.

[Federica]

Here's one more angle that will hopefully help get a better perspective. Consider how Steiner spoke about
1. Wisdom of Man (Anthroposophy)
2. Wisdom of the Soul (Psychosophy)
3. Wisdom of the Spirit (Pneumatosophy)
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/WisdoMan ... index.html

We usually take Anthroposophy as a more encompassing term, including the whole of spiritual science, but in the above context, it must be seen more specifically.
1. The intuitive life experienced when the full spiritual life intersects with the embodied spectrum - body and intellect
2. The intuitive life experienced within the tensions of the streams of destiny/karma (acting as a carrier flow for the above) - soul
3. The intuitive life experienced within the archetypal creative currents of the Cosmos (carrier flow for all the above) - spirit

We can easily discern that VT, entering his catholic period, basically retracts into Soul Wisdom. He is dissatisfied with Spirit Wisdom, which feels too abstract. Whether this was his own limitation or he was too conscious of how far removed most people are from these depths (and thus decided to engage in a field that felt more proximate to most of the souls) is another question. It is certain, however, that the Wisdom of the Spirit became the amniotic sac of the Church. We should really feel this - the soul gladly delegates the depths of existence to the being of the Church.

What is the difference between 2 and 3? In 2 we still live as an ensouled being (Spirit Self or Soul Self), living in personal soul images reflecting (symbolizing) the Cosmic intuitive realities. In 3 we grow into the creative Being of the Cosmos and its rhythmic unfolding (Spirit Life, Spirit Man). This includes not only the grand scale evolutionary metamorphoses but also their fractal-like receding elemental images. The difficulty in taking Spirit Wisdom properly (and not as mere abstract ideas) is that we need to approach a perspective where our existence finds its reflection in the grand scale of Cosmic happenings. IOW, we must overcome the idea that we can pursue our personal thread of existence. Our stream of becoming is now inseparable from the holistic flow of Cosmic becoming.

For this reason, it is very easy to understand why Spirit Wisdom inevitably seems more abstract and remote at first, while Soul Wisdom speaks more intimately. This can make it seem like we can start absorbing Soul Wisdom, while Spirit Wisdom will come when the time is right. However, if we approach it in this way, that 'right' time may never come. Why is this so? Because it is often not realized that even in our mainstream development, we're already subconsciously with one foot into the spiritual world, into 3.

Let's take as an example Darwin. This is often seen as an example of the exact opposite of the proper evolutionary trajectory that humanity must take, but we must also realize that these ideas are directly indicative of the fact that the human spirit is ripe to absorb into its intuitive being the grand scale development of the World. Notice that by thinking about the evolution of the species, we necessarily live with our thoughts (even if only in abstract mental images) in the stream of existence that far surpasses our present personal life. So with our intellect we stretch, we reach into the mystery of existence, trying to find something about the Taylor curvatures of the here and now.

If today we are in a position to think seriously about the mainstream ideas of biological and Cosmic evolution (the Big Bang, the generations of stars and matter), then we absolutely are in a position to reach into true Spirit Wisdom. If we do not do that, if we, for example, imagine that these mainstream theories are mere intellectual toys, and we are far better off by delving into Soul Wisdom, while we leave the deeper questions for the future, we simply do not realize that with our spiritual being, we're already instinctively active in the regions beyond the amniotic sac. If we understand this, we see that not only is it not too early to introduce Spirit Wisdom, but it is actually vital. I remind of this quote:

Indeed, many of us will say: we strive for two things on our way through the spiritual-scientific movement. First: to penetrate that reasonably which spiritual science gives us. Secondly: because we apply to our souls the spiritual-scientific methods, as they are outlined to us, for example, in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, we strive for getting the perception of the spiritual world already during our physical incarnation. But some will say: definitely only to some, only to few it is allotted by their karma to reach the spiritual world consciously in this incarnation. Indeed, everybody would and does come into the spiritual world in certain sense who only applies these rules; but noticing that he is in it; taking notice on it is more difficult than entering it. Some people are prevented from being aware in which way they are in the spiritual world even if they are really in it. Because they are unable to apply that fine, intimate attention on their experience. One would like to say, everybody who applies the instructions given in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds enters the spiritual world with his self after a relatively short time, but — he does not notice it. Just concerning such a consideration I have to stress repeatedly that the reasonable understanding of that which is given in spiritual science does not depend at all whether anybody himself beholds in the spiritual world.
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA159 ... 19p01.html

This is tremendously important. Not only on a personal level but also on the collective. That not too many people today have thoughts of the spiritual realm is not yet the greatest danger. It would be even worse when more and more people live instinctively in the spiritual streams but do not recognize it; if everything would still be grasped only as far as it intersects with the bodily spectrum. We have spoken about how psychedelics offer one such danger, that the bodies loosen, yet the spiritual being remains completely numb to the finer intuitive life. Instead, one still seeks to 'see', one seeks reality in bodily-like sensations (which are always of the nature of receding memories).

We often forget how prepared we are to approach things thanks to spiritual science. Then we can appreciate the masterful ways in which Soul Wisdom is conveyed by VT. But we should also ask: How would things stand if this work was our main source of navigation and we knew nothing of Spirit Wisdom? Would we ever reach a point where we feel that we need to go further? Or we would rather wait for the Church aura itself to evolve and carry us? Then, in whose service it is if human beings do not notice that they are already unconsciously moving within the Spirit worlds (and instead await the Church to reach them and guide souls through updated rituals and sacraments)?

Yes, thank you! It occurs to me now, this must also be the meaning of:

"Before the eyes can see, they must become incapable of tears."


In this connection - I don't remember if it's in HTKTHW or in Theosophy - until recently, I had not properly understood the meaning of equanimity. Equanimity is not about equalizing feelings and judgments, balancing them, making them more wise or less instinctive. Equanimity is about going through the feelings, pleasures, pains, by transforming them in sense organs that can speak to us of realities living behind them. As long as we simply dwell in them, we are concerned only with our soul life, and their effects on us personally. It's only when we become incapable of tears, then such experiences cease to have significance only for ourselves and begin to tell us something about the Spirit.

[AshvinP]

Oh man... I've not said/meant the following at all: "that we deny the collapsed world by seeking the experience of its Source". That's not what my post was about. Instead, it was specifically about the particular attitude of attempting to find the unity OMA speaks of, not within the principles, but within the level of decohered facts, an attitude which ends up dangerously bordering with the statement that everything and its opposite are equally true, in the decohered state. Steiner and VT are saying opposite things about the Church but they are actually saying the same, and similar attempts to always reconcile things in the realm of decohered things.

But no one is doing this, except perhaps you (remember the sensory-motor and health-illness discussions, where an equivalence was sought within the level of decohered facts). Neither Steiner nor Tomberg, nor Cleric nor myself, have ever sought the experiential unity within this level. The facts of reincarnation/karma are not perceived and do not take shape at this level, neither do the facts surrounding cultural institutions and their functions within the evolutionary process. We are dealing with living idea-beings here. This becomes abundantly clear when we take the time to experience such communicated facts livingly, just as the clairvoyants do. If you don't want to take anything we write seriously, that's another matter, but this is the reality of the situation. Your perception of the situation is simply Maya.

[AshvinP]

Here's one more angle that will hopefully help get a better perspective. Consider how Steiner spoke about
1. Wisdom of Man (Anthroposophy)
2. Wisdom of the Soul (Psychosophy)
3. Wisdom of the Spirit (Pneumatosophy)
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/WisdoMan ... index.html
...
We often forget how prepared we are to approach things thanks to spiritual science. Then we can appreciate the masterful ways in which Soul Wisdom is conveyed by VT. But we should also ask: How would things stand if this work was our main source of navigation and we knew nothing of Spirit Wisdom? Would we ever reach a point where we feel that we need to go further? Or we would rather wait for the Church aura itself to evolve and carry us? Then, in whose service it is if human beings do not notice that they are already unconsciously moving within the Spirit worlds (and instead await the Church to reach them and guide souls through updated rituals and sacraments)?

This is a very helpful angle from which to perceive these dynamics. Thanks!

What is most important is the musical coordination between 1, 2, and 3. When we set any of these Wisdom approaches in dialectical opposition to the others, that coordination simply can't happen, and rather a form of reductionism inevitably takes hold. As I mentioned above, focusing exclusively on 1 can also become a means of abdicating responsibility for 3. The common thread is that the soul becomes excessively dependent on mere intellectual gestures, usually provided by external authorities, and corresponding personal images of spiritual realities.

This also reminds me of an article by Robert Powell. (as an aside, I wouldn't say Steiner only represented the 'Aristotelian stream', but he clearly found ways of integrating both streams into his artistic expressions of spiritual realities)

***

When Elisabeth Vreede was excluded from the Vorstand of the Anthroposophical Society, this meant the exclusion of the Platonic stream to which she belonged. It meant also the exclusion of the one whom she recognized as the leading figure of the Platonic stream, who – as she clearly saw and acknowledged in her Foreword to the first English edition of the Studies of the Old Testament – was capable of carrying on spiritual scientific research along the lines of Rudolf Steiner. If she had remained in the Vorstand, Valentin Tomberg – as her protégé – would have been introduced to the members of the Anthroposophical Society as a spiritual researcher and Tomberg would have had the possibility of gaining widespread acceptance for the fulfillment of his mission, which was to teach concerning the coming of Christ in the etheric realm (as referred to in his seven lectures entitled The Four Sacrifices of Christ and the Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric published as an Appendix at the end of the recently published book Christ and Sophia).4 One cannot understand the destiny of the Anthroposophical Society in the twentieth century if one does not know about this and if one does not clearly see that forces were at work to bring about a split between the Aristotelian and Platonic streams represented by Rudolf Steiner and Valentin Tomberg. Elisabeth Vreede did all she could to work against this tragic divisive tendency. She devoted much time and energy to leading people together.

The following quotation from Elisabeth Vreede’s biography shows how she was always firmly against anyone being excluded from the Anthroposophical Society. She knew and recognized that all should be able to find a place within the Society and should be allowed to express themselves. She carried the central concerns of the Anthroposophical Society in her heart and she was aware of preparing the way for others who would come later – representatives, like Valentin Tomberg and Willi Sucher,5 of the Platonic stream. Her concern was that the Platonists should also find their place within the Society:

The Being of Anthroposophy I have always felt to be a newly created spiritual Being – created with the help of Dr. Steiner – so to say the first hierarchical Being generated by human beings. This Being is very young and relatively undeveloped, like a child – a Being that has to develop further through our working together as a “community of spiritual knowledge” and under the guidance of its creator from the spiritual world. Precisely on this account I find it so painful when again and again such hostile attacks are launched against some active members with a view to excluding them from this work of co-creation of the Being of Anthroposophy.

[Federica]

Oh man... I've not said/meant the following at all: "that we deny the collapsed world by seeking the experience of its Source". That's not what my post was about. Instead, it was specifically about the particular attitude of attempting to find the unity OMA speaks of, not within the principles, but within the level of decohered facts, an attitude which ends up dangerously bordering with the statement that everything and its opposite are equally true, in the decohered state. Steiner and VT are saying opposite things about the Church but they are actually saying the same, and similar attempts to always reconcile things in the realm of decohered things.

But no one is doing this, except perhaps you (remember the sensory-motor and health-illness discussions, where an equivalence was sought within the level of decohered facts). Neither Steiner nor Tomberg, nor Cleric nor myself, have ever sought the experiential unity within this level. The facts of reincarnation/karma are not perceived and do not take shape at this level, neither do the facts surrounding cultural institutions and their functions within the evolutionary process. We are dealing with living idea-beings here. This becomes abundantly clear when we take the time to experience such communicated facts livingly, just as the clairvoyants do. If you don't want to take anything we write seriously, that's another matter, but this is the reality of the situation. Your perception of the situation is simply Maya.

Ashvin,

Here, you have exactly stated that the approach of "becoming more cautious and placing knowledge of reincarnation into the domain of personal certainty" is "reflected in spiritual science more generally". I think I have more than sufficiently demonstrated how this is far, far, far from being the case. This is not the case, in any worlds, not in the Spirit world, not in the Soul world, not in the condensed world of senses.

How to understand such a position, if not as the result of a desire to reconcile at all costs Tomberg's position with Spiritual Science? If there's another explanation for such an evidently one-sided and unsubstantiated position, I am willing to consider it. At this point, I see it as an obstinate attempt to 'meditate your way' living idea beings (indeed, that's what they are) and their condensations, to make them fit your strong desire to undo the contradiction between RS and VT.

But, again, even if my understanding of why you made such statement turned out to be wrong (which I don't exclude) the statements in themselves are hopelessly wrong, as I have amply demonstrated here and here. More than that, one should be wary of such statements, to the extent tht they tend to conceal a truth that absolutely needs to be spread and known.